Tag: Puppies

In Which the Cancellers are Cancelled

Worldcon’s death-spiral toward extinction continues apace, as chronicled by Fandom Pulse:

Worldcon used to be the gold standard of science fiction conventions. Creators like Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, and more would get together every year to share ideas, build community, and help the genre altogether. It’s a good idea, in theory.In its past, of course, it’s also been mired with controversy, such as Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen using convention rooms as places to rape children, something that long-stained its history when it came out in recent years.

Beyond this, Worldcon had turned its back on conservatives for an extreme-leftist agenda that reared its ugly head in the mid-2010s with the Hugo Awards, when they prioritized politics over good storytelling to the determinant of the award. It never recovered its prestige. It resulted in 2018 having a protest against pedophilia outside of the convention where, oddly, many of the panelists counter-protested against the protest. The implication is that several of those people apparently stand for pedophilia.

In recent years, they’ve had more controversies, such as having the weapons’ manufacturer Raytheon sponsor the convention, heading to China to have the CCP dictate who could be nominated for their awards, and then using their platform to urge that travel to the United States is somehow dangerous as an attack on President Donald Trump and America—despite the convention being in Seattle this year and Los Angeles in the next.

Now, they have posted a blog that turned their entire leftist community on them, not because of pedophilia or extremist political causes, or supporting weapons manufacturers that bomb children in Middle Eastern countries, or for bowing to the human-rights violating CCP, no, the line they’ve drawn is that ChatGPT was used to vet potential panelists for their ever-shrinking convention, as the science fiction landscape has grown so niche that the con organizers simply didn’t know who most of the people were who applied for spots.

At this point, the “science fiction community” as it was known and loved by the likes of Roger Zelazny and Jerry Pournelle is effectively dead. The material being published by the genre publishers is no longer science fiction, the authors are complete nobodies whom nobody either knows or reads, the magazines are no longer being published, and the one healthy subgenre, military science fiction, is entirely written and read by people who have nothing to do with the tattered remnants of what was once a vibrant sub-literary genre.

It’s really remarkable to read Zelazny’s comments on the community in which he lived and the genre he loved, and see how far from his expectations for the future both of them have fallen.

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of Monster Hunter

May also mean the end of Baen Books, if Fandom Pulse’s logic is correct:

Larry Correia has made a Facebook post stating he won’t even begin writing the next Monster Hunter International books until 2026, which means a two-year dry spell of revenue for the embattled publisher. However, it gets even worse, as Correia has stated that this book will likely be his last in the series.

But never fear, there are still monsters and they still need to be hunted. Or, at least, controlled, which is why Monster Control Incorporated is on the job and is being serialized every week at Sigma Game.

I’ve been walking my crush home since last week to protect her from all the creeps walking around. Next week I’m going to introduce myself to her.

Right now, though, I was content to stay in the shadows, watching from a distance as she made her way down the dimly lit sidewalk. Her name was Elise, and she worked the late shift at the diner on 5th and Main. Every night at 11:30, she stepped out, adjusted her bag over her shoulder, and started the six-block walk to her apartment. And every night, I followed.

Not in a creepy way. At least, I hoped not. The city had gotten bad lately—muggers, weirdos, and worse. The kind of things most people didn’t believe in until it was too late. I’d seen the news reports: Missing Persons. Unexplained Attacks. Animal Maulings. The cops didn’t have a clue. But I did.

I knew what was out there.

Elise turned the corner, her fair hair bright under the glow of a flickering streetlight. She was small, and delicate, but moved with a quiet confidence that made my chest tighten. I kept my distance, staying far enough back that she wouldn’t notice me, close enough that I could reach her in seconds if something went wrong.

Something went wrong a lot these days.

Tonight, the air smelled like rain and something else—something musky and wild. My fingers twitched at my sides. I didn’t carry a gun. Guns were too loud, too messy. Instead, I had a knife sheathed at my belt and a length of silver chain wrapped around my wrist.

Elise hummed softly to herself, oblivious. She had no idea what was coming.

Then I heard it—the low, guttural growl from the alley up ahead.

You’ve never seen a monster hunter quite like Horace “Race” Scrubb before. He puts the L in “professional”.

DISCUSS ON SG

I Did Warn Them

I wasn’t even remotely surprised by the SF-SJWs reaction to the triumphant Puppies’ campaigns. But I did find it a little ironic that a group of people who were supposed to be at least modestly conversant with science clearly weren’t familiar with Newton’s Third Law.

The Hugo Awards have been embroiled in controversy too many times in the last decade to have much relevancy anymore. Once known as science fiction’s Oscars, the publishing industry has turned off most casual readers from their incessant political activism and gotten to a point where it’s hardly notice anymore who’s winning these ballots.

Back in 2016, it took a lot of votes to get a nomination for the Hugo Awards. 3,695 ballots were cast for Worldcon that year, and you’d find familiar names for Best Novel such as Neal Stephenson and Jim Butcher among the list of those nominated ,even though much more niche works eventually won…

All of these problems have only compounded in recent years as more people have tuned out.

By the numbers, the best novel category had 3,695 ballots in 2016. In 2024, even after the controversy in China, there were 1,420 ballots cast,. This year, however, only 1,078 ballots were cast for the most popular category, less than thirty percent of a decade ago.

Once you understand how convergence works, then you know what is going to happen, even if it takes years for the inevitable to play itself out. In fairness to the SF-SJWs, though, this was only a very small part of a large societal trend in the same direction which has rendered many, if not most organizations totally incapable of performing their original functions.

Both the SFWA and the Hugo Awards are already dead from the perspective of their original purposes. It shouldn’t be much longer before they both go the way of the now-defunct Nebula Jury, the Campbell Award, and World Fantasy’s Lovecraft statuette.

DISCUSS ON SG

Churchill, FDR, and Stalin

Back in the days when the Sad Puppies were the #GamerGate of the science fiction world, I reached a gentleman’s agreement with Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen, two of the first three leaders of the Sad Puppies, after they decided that they did not want to be directly connected to me or the group that became known as the Rabid Puppies. I told them at the time that this separation was a mistake for them, and that there were more Rabid Puppies than Sad Puppies, but they refused to believe that and insisted it was necessary for reasons that I will leave to them to explain.

However, they did agree that given the amount of media scrutiny we were all under, it would serve little purpose for us to attempt to speak for, or about, each other in public. All three of us knew that the media was going to try very hard to utilize anything that we would say to undermine the others. To their credit, and to mine, none of us gave the media any material for ten years.

Unfortunately, I have now concluded it is time to end that gentlemen’s agreement because a) it is now clear and undeniable that these are two men who are not, and perhaps never were, on the side of what is right or what is true, b) they are not gentlemen, and c) they have been repeatedly lying about one of my authors for several years. Therefore, I sent both of them this email last night.

Gentlemen,

This is just a heads-up that I am concluding our gentlemen’s agreement. It’s absolutely fine that you don’t like Del Arroz. But you’re both blatantly and very publicly lying about one of my authors, and you’ve both been behaving in an unprofessional manner. I do not find this acceptable.

You’re certainly free to think what you like and you can call me all the names in the book that strike your fancy. You can even get an early start on it, if you like, since I’ll be quoting both of you at length tomorrow.

Regards, etc.
Vox

Now, to a certain extent, this is a tempest in a teapot. Literally no one in our greater community has given a quantum of a damn about what Larry Correia thinks ever since he opted out of leading the Sad Puppies more than a decade ago. Being a flagrant Never-Trumper, a civic nationalist, and a Mormon, he’s as irrelevant to the tens of thousands of Castalia, Arkhaven, and Unauthorized fans as I am to his readership. And I doubt more than two percent of our community has ever even heard of Brad Torgersen.

But nevertheless, as we’ve seen again and again, what permits wickedness to thrive is the tolerance and the silence of those who know better. And what Larry and Brad have been doing for years, the twisted rhetoric they have been repeatedly attempting to pass off as the truth, is neither good, nor beautiful, nor true. They no longer merit respect or restraint on my part.

Here are a few examples of the unacceptable behavior to which I am referring. It should be clear to any impartial observer that Larry Correia is a vulgar midwit with very poor judgment on matters personal, professional, and political.

  • Jo Bird almost nothing you wrote there is accurate. That is common when you get your news from a known pathological liar. You not getting the venom isn’t my problem. I’ve dealt with this piece of shit for years and believe he is a malignant sociopath. Lots of people have seen this in action and know. Then someone like you comes along, people explain why he’s despised, then he farms those comments about his history to make more content playing the victim. It’s a big tiresome scam. The reason people don’t like to talk about him directly is he gets off on the attention.
  • Everything this fucker says is a twisted lie. There are two types of non-lefty authors. Those who have been conned into thinking JDA isn’t a piece of shit, and those who have found out that JDA is actually a piece of shit.
  • His “anonymous sources” are the demons he’s possessed by.
  • You’re just a narcissistic grifter. You’re not on my team. You’re on a team that consists of you and your bizarrely over inflated ego. Everybody is wise to your schtick except a handful of mopes who buy into your exaggerated fake Christian, alpha male, try hard act. They don’t realize that behind the scenes you wanted so hard to write for us that you were an annoying, cloying, suck up, and you got rejected, not for politics, but because you’re just not that good, and you’ve had a chip on your shoulder ever since. The only writers who haven’t cut ties with you are the ones who haven’t yet clued in to your scam, just like I tried to help you when you first got blackballed, until I clued in on your scam. But you’ll fuck them over too in order to score some points for yourself eventually, because you can’t help yourself. Then once they realize you’re just a weird creepy asshole, you’ll make yourself out to be the victim and they’re sell outs. It’s who you are. Now seriously. Fuck off. I’m sure you’ll go write some posts and do some videos about how I’m a sellout loser cuck gamma soyboy or whatever, and you’ll get a couple hundred hits maybe, and I’ll be happy to go back to ignoring you.
  • Jon is a sociopathic grifter who goes through life trying to insert himself into other peoples’ troubles to try and score clout for himself. He starts shit for others and then cries how he’s a victim. When you take exception to him fucking people over for clout he will say everybody but him is a secret leftist sell out and you just hate him because he’s “Christian”. Do not trust him. He’s fucking cancer. Seriously. I can’t accentuate this enough. Trust him at your own peril. That dude is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.
  • You stupid motherfucker. The press wants Trump to be the nominee. They give him endless free coverage. They make sure he sucks all the air out of the room. They want you low information dipshits to push him through the primary. They know Trump is easiest to beat in the general. And on the off chance he wins, they already know how to reliably manipulate him.
  • ONLY Trump can win the White House and to prove that he points us to… Richard Baris? Holy fuck. And I’d point you to cold cruel reality where half of America despises Trump, his candidates get trounced, and that’s before he’s a convicted felon. Like seriously. (Insert Generic Vanilla Republican here) would be a better choice to win in the general because of Trump’s ridiculous baggage. People are sick of the democrats, but they are also sick of Trump’s shit. The only people who aren’t sick of his shit are the Trumpkins who eat that clown show up, but as the last elections demonstrated, they turn out far less than the moderates who hate his guts.

In summary, Larry Correia does not know the truth, he does not tell the truth, and he is not, by his own profession, on our team. As for Brad Torgersen, everything he is can be encapsulated in one single statement.

  • May the Lord take Trump in his sleep tonight.

That’s no way to talk about the man who was not only the second-greatest President that the USA has ever known in his first presidential incarnation, but is presently leading America in a desperate war for national survival against the Deep State, the Deep Church, and Clown World.

Just as Neil Gaiman’s fans were given sufficient opportunity to observe that there was something fundamentally wrong with the man before it became impossible to deny, fans of Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen should now be aware that they are not the sort of men they are often assumed, in ignorance, to be. They, their colleagues, and their supporters can spin and posture and spew all the vulgar rhetoric they like, but the truth will inexorably expose them for who and what they are.

Ten years ago, Larry compared the three of us to three WWII leaders. “Look at it like this. I’m Churchill. Brad is FDR. We wound up on the same side as Stalin.”

It was an apt comparison. As you may recall, Stalin won.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Pointlessness of Posturing

Either a number of people associated with Baen Books are less dialed-in to what is happening on the business side than they believe themselves to be or they desperately need lessons in some of the basics of public relations.

  • PR 101: Never deny anything that you know someone else can prove.
  • PR 102: Never get into a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.

Larry Correia posted a long-winded rant both on his blog and on X regarding the piece, opening with the personal attack, “So I hear certain people are trying to stir up outrage clicks spreading dumb rumors about some publishers again.”

Our article, however, does not contain any speculation, only a reporting of facts that have been verified and direct commentary from several Baen Books authors and employees, as previously noted.

Correia did, however, elaborate that he intends to diversify his book portfolio from Baen Books even further in the coming years. He said, “Here, I’ll even add to the freak out, I’m also going to be doing some pure indy stuff in the future too. Why? Because I can, and I want to see what happens when I do. It has been a long time since I’ve experimented in that, the market has changed a ton since then, and has a lot of potential. I like making money. Me doing an indy project might make money. Go figure.”

Many of Correia’s fans reacted to his rant, voicing support for the author and making odd comments mocking his “career-ending,” responding to everything he said but not any of the information in Fandom Pulse’s article, as Correia obfuscated as to what the topic was at hand.

Former Sad Puppy Sarah A. Hoyt, who was dropped from Baen due to her poor sales and is not an American, replied with a bizarre comment, “Yeah. People asked, so I actually read the idiocy. It’s all a thinly veiled tissue of hallucinations…. Having been the subject of such ‘reporting’ before, I’m not even amused.” It’s unclear what she’s talking about.

It doesn’t take a genius to observe that Baen Books is unlikely to survive the loss of Larry Correia to both a) another publisher and b) going independent. Perhaps some of the people quoted don’t know this, but Baen is 25 percent owned by Tor Books and has a very limited number of distribution slots through its distribution partner. As with most mainstream publishers, it is heavily dependent upon its bestselling author or two propping up the rest of its authors.

This is the problem that Tor Books faces as well. The reason John Scalzi was given a massive lead author contract was because Tor needed to replace Brandon Sanderson, the late Robert Jordan, and the game tie-in business that it lost, unfortunately for Tor and Scalzi, he has been unable to do so. He still sells, he just doesn’t sell well enough.

The fact that Larry Correia walked means that Baen Books couldn’t afford the right of first refusal to his new series, which is hardly surprising. I told Larry back in 2015 that he should go independent and I’ve expected to see him do so ever since Brandon Sanderson demonstrated how high the ceiling can be for an independent author. The fact that he was willing to prop up Baen for nearly ten years longer than he probably should have from a financial perspective is testimony to his loyalty and gratitude to his longtime publisher.

But Baen has been circling the drain for years anyhow, because its business practices are out of date. It ignored the authors it should have been courting – including Nick Cole, Jason Anspach, John C. Wright, JDA, and myself, among others – while also ignoring the advent of crowdfunding and the negative impact of Kindle Unlimited. And now its window of opportunity has closed.

People can preen and posture all they like, but what will be will be. And it’s both foolish and futile to get one’s panties in a bunch over educated observers simply noting what has happened, what is happening, and what is likely to happen. Let bygones be bygones and make hay while the sun is shining; just yesterday one of my more vehement past critics and I achieved mutual understanding on a potential future project with excellent prospects for both of us; whether we follow through on it or not, the mere fact of our discussion is a testimony to the professional approach to these things.

I may not be fond of John Scalzi, just to give one example, but if the man ever decides he wants to do a deluxe edition of Old Man’s War in leather, I’ll not only agree to work with him, I’ll guarantee him that we will make him a higher-quality and more attractive edition than Easton or Folio Society will give him. Because an important part of being professional is learning how to set aside one’s personal predilections.

DISCUSS ON SG

Baiting Sarah

This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard. But I have no doubt that it is true and that her suspicions about the intentions of the Feds contacting her are entirely correct:

Sarah Hoyt posted to X, “You know what’s REALLY creepy? In the run-up to Jan 6th, we had a lot of “first time commenters” drop by my blog trying to convince me to attend. At the time we were PROFOUNDLY broke and some of them even offered to pay my way. Out of the blue.”

She continued, “I didn’t accept because I didn’t see any purpose to the gathering. I still don’t. (Yes, I understand Trump might have thought he could shame the House into doing the right thing. That level of naivite shocks me, still.) BUT—”

“Well in the aftermath I wondered. I still do. None of those IDs commented on my blog again, funnily enough. It’s probably nothing, but it does make one think,” she concluded.

I was similarly approached prior to the fake Unite The Right rally in 2017. That was the event that was staged in Charlottesville, Virginia and designed to entrap nationalists and tar them as “white supremacists”. I was contacted by Richard Spencer and asked to be a speaker at the event, which, of course, I declined, being neither a white supremacist nor a political activist despite what the fantasists of Wikipedia might erroneously claim.

However, I think it was more than just Mrs. Hoyt being a contributor to Instapundit that caused her to be targeted. GamerGate left a lasting impression on the government-media complex, the entire literary world is still butthurt about Sad Puppies, and her being the head of the Sad Puppies rebellion almost certainly put her on the top of their list of problematic badthinkers to be discredited.

It’s amusing, of course, since Sarah is a die-hard civic nationalist, a self-styled “American born in Portugal,” who deplores genuine nationalism nearly as wholeheartedly as the average globalist. But those who think in symbols rather than in coherent syllogisms are seldom concerned with the logic of their actions or what is truly in the hearts of their intended victims.

Of course, Richard Spencer was a fraud, which I realized soon after interviewing him and seeing how shallow his claimed beliefs were. He’s just an actor playing the role of a villain.

One of the United States’ foremost white supremacists, Richard Spencer, has called for followers to vote for Kamala Harris in the upcoming elections.

DISCUSS ON SG

When Puppies Become Wolves

Larry Correia is unimpressed by charges of hypocrisy by those who are upset and frightened by the realization that the pendulum is swinging back in their faces.

You’re the woke right cancel culture. You know, they guy you have pretended to hate this whole time. With a slice of hypocrisy and anger.

Oh these fools really don’t get it. There is no hypocrisy here. But there is anger. And it ain’t no slice. I despise these assholes with a passion.

You don’t know what anger is until Caring Liberals decide to destroy your life for crimes that exist in their fevered imagination, to the point they they run organized slander campaigns against you so vile that it puts the lives of your children in danger. Gleefully they rooted for psychos to try and kill me, because I hurt their feelings once over a meaningless award.

For the last ten years at every turn, petty fucks tried to destroy my livelihood. For ten years they continued to spread nasty shit that they knew to be false, but they did it anyway, just out of spite because I believe wrong.

My continued success galled them. That’s not how this is supposed to work. I was supposed to roll over and cower and beg forgiveness for things I never did. But I refused.

Despite that, there is no doubt their cancel campaign has been effective in that it has cost me millions of dollars. There’s nothing quite like having thousands of total strangers reflexively hate you because everything they’ve ever been told about you is a lie. Super fun.

But my continued success pisses these assholes off, so it’s totally worth it.

For over ten years I tried to warn the few remaining honest people on the left where their reckless destruction of the social contract was going to lead us. Now, I simply no longer give a fuck if their hubris destroys them. I will toast marshmallows over your cremation fire.

I’m no hypocrite. Oh no. I’m far, far past that. I actively root for your utter destruction. I’ve moved into a zen state of watching you honorless dogs pave the road to hell. And I will sit back and gloat as you burn.

For you see, there is no hypocrisy, because I’m not canceling you. I’m merely watching and laughing and commenting upon the obvious, as the puppies you beat and abused until they turned into wolves inevitably devour you.

Larry knows, even if some of the garden-variety SJWs don’t, that the Rabid Puppies of yesterday are the wolves of today. We’re not just watching and laughing, we’re meticulously exercising our right to excise their kind from our personal lives, our families, our professional lives, and our social circles. SJWs are going to SJW, nothing is going to stop that, but they’re going to have to do it at a distance from now on. And it’s very far from hypocrisy to insist that they be held to their own standard: No freedom of consequences.

DISCUSS ON SG

An Accurate Review

In which a reviewer of fantasy books tries, and quite understandably fails, to finish reading the award-winning masterworks of one N.K. Jemisin:

I believe that the Broken Earth Trilogy specifically the fifth season which is the first book is so bad
that it’s essentially unreadable. I don’t remember a book that I’ve read that I believe personally is as bad as this one, and it shocks me that not only is this book extremely popular, but every single book in the trilogy won the Hugo award for the best book. This is a beloved series that many people claim
this is the best fantasy series of all time and I could not have a more contrary opinion to my feeling about
this book.

The fact that a third of this book was written in the second person is a ridiculous, ridiculous thing. The second person does not work when it comes to books, it works in some other forms of media, it works in video games, it works quite well in video games where you can picture yourself into the main character and people are talking to you in that way, but in a book it comes off so odd that it’s off-putting and difficult to suck in. There is a reason that virtually no books utilize the second person, and it’s not because they’re not as smart as NK Jemisin that they haven’t been able to pull it off, it’s because it doesn’t work.

I believed, constantly, as I read this book, that Jemisin was trying to be too smart and it came off as ridiculous. The second person is horrible, the way that she writes is atrocious. At times where she uses these italics and bolds and all caps within the text to really drive home a point, to really make this strong emphasis, you shouldn’t have to rely on that to make a really strong point. It comes off as kind of crazy.

I thought the twist that was in this book, and there is a major one, and I still don’t know if it actually occurs because I didn’t finish the book. I got 95 percent of the way through, and I said ‘I cannot bear to finish this book’ but I’m about 100 percent confident that there is a major twist that happens at the end of this book that is so obvious that it becomes one of the most telegraphed and poor choices for a twist that I’ve ever read. I can’t say what it is, but I can say that myself, and I suspect a great many readers figured out what it is within the first 50 or so pages. It’s not so much that the twist is ruined, you know. I’ve figured out twists before and it’s disappointing, it doesn’t happen a lot for me. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, I’m oftentimes the last person to pick up on these things, and I really do like it that way. I prefer to be surprised, I don’t want to figure stuff out, I don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. I want to be, you know, the dummy that is the last one to get it, but man, it’s obvious.

The problem is that the way that the book is structured with this bouncing around in a timeline is ruined
because of the twist. It’s a really poor way to tell the story and the story would have been much preferable to be in a more cohesive, clear, linear fashion, and I don’t think that’s true for all books. I think some books that use time jumps and these different point of views and these things can be very very good, some of my favorite books utilize that, but I think the book sacrificed a great deal in quality to do this and it didn’t work. The twist did not achieve its stated goals.

Now when I’ve said this before, I heard a lot of people in the comments say ‘you’re supposed to figure it out.’ No, you’re not! That is a retrospective retelling of the events to try to justify what occurred in this book. Now the last thing I’ll say about a major reason that I disliked this book is the way that characters move on from traumatic events. I think it’s horrible, some horrible things happen in this book, and this book bills itself as being a tear-jerker and just very depressing and these bad things happen, and that
that’s true for the large part, but the characters have these horrible things happen and they reminisce about them for a moment, and they take it in, and then they just move on. That’s crazy, that’s not real life. When horrible things happen people sit with them for great amounts of time, and maybe in later books they reinvestigate this, but in this first book, man, it didn’t work well.

So I can’t say enough negative things about this book and I am absolutely floored at how popular this book and this book series are.

The secret is that the book and the book series are not even remotely popular. By her own admission, N… K… Jemisin can’t making a living off them. This is the problem with manufactured “success”. It simply isn’t real, and no amount of fakery and propping up pets, poster children, and other imposters is going to fool anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about.

And yes, the reviewer is correct. One of the cruelest things I have ever done is inspire the SFWA crowd to demolish their own awards by handing a Best Novel award or two to N… K… Yes, I knew “the indirect backlash and overcorrection” would happen. Yes, it was intentional. But no, I never imagined that they would do it THREE straight years in a row. That really exceeded my expectations.

The only thing that would have been funnier would have been if they’d actually followed through on their rhetoric and given an award to Chuck Tingle. But even that would have been less damaging than what they actually did.

DISCUSS ON SG

No Common Ground, No Compromise

One of the leading lights of the Evil Legion of Evil, John C. Wright, reminds us of the the irreconcilable differences between the SJWs of science fiction and the Sad Puppies:

The difference between the Puppies and the Morlocks is not artistic, cultural, political nor ideological. We are civilized folk who can have a civilized discussion on this or any topic, and judge matters based on simple principles of fairness all civilized men since the dawn of time have understood.

They are barbarians. Barbarism is not an ideology, not a political party, not a religion. It is a state of undeveloped savagery which simple and primitive emotions hold sway. It is a mob.

Q: •Do you see any way to encourage a reconciliation between the literary camps?

JCW: Reconciliation was attempted and savagely rebuffed. To use one example of a dozen, Mr. Martin and I had an agreement to let these matters rest, which he immediately broke in a dishonorable and disappointing fashion. When my wife, also a Tor author, meekly approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at a party during World Con in an attempt to affect a reconciliation, he shouted and swore at her using potty-mouth language. Fortunately for my police record, this event did not happen within my earshot. It is not the way any professional conducts himself in business.

Q: If so, how might that be achieved?  If not, why not?

JCW: Reconciliation is neither desirable nor possible, for the difference between the two camps is not a difference in literary taste, not a difference in political opinion, nor a difference of philosophy nor religion. It is a difference between creators and destroyers; it is a difference between unhappy and envious parasites and the happy hosts on whose blood and work they feed, attempting in vain to fill their own emptiness.

Q: Given your experiences with the Sad Puppies/Hugo situation, what advice would you offer to aspiring writers who are concerned about the politics of the sci-fi/fantasy writing industry today?

JCW: Again, your terminology is imprecise. This is not politics. This is a war between civilized men and filthy barbarians. It is a struggle between humans and post-humans.

My advice is to gird up your loins and prepare to fight for what you love.

These people are relentless. They cannot be reasoned with. They despise reason.  Compromise is not possible. They regard concession as admission of weakness. They will not accept your surrender. They hate you and hate everything you love. What they want is the power to terrify you by threatening your livelihood and damaging you reputation, and then to use that power to destroy.

Even the most loyal bootlicking sycophant among them, at any moment, for any reason or no reason, can be denounced as this week’s thought-criminal, and subjected to the Two Minute Hate. You cannot escape the Eye of Sauron by obeying him.

Elizabeth Moon and Jim Frenkel are persons whose progressive, leftwing credentials are impeccable. The social justice warriors arbitrarily and randomly decided to destroy the careers of these two. This was done to impress all onlookers with the arbitrary nature of the Morlock power. The fact that both are innocent of the bizarre accusations leveled against them is a feature, not a bug. A rational despot can be obeyed, and those who obey have no need to fear. The irrational terrorist, however, smites random targets, so that all will fear.

I offer aspiring writers this advice: Never apologize to a Morlock when called upon to do so. They do not call upon the guilty to apologize, but the innocent. Never believe a word they say. The social justice warrior always lies; always retrenches his lies when caught; always accuses you of his own sins.

Adopt the correct motive for writing: myself, I write to please heaven. I have no interest in pleasing Uncle Screwtape or any of his minions and thralls, knowing or unknowing, here on earth. To wring the cold smile from a dead-eyed fanatic that hates my civilization, my nation, my faith, my family and my life is not one of my goals and should not be yours.

There is no common ground. There can be no compromise. And there will be no reconciliation. But whereas they are weaker and less popular than ever before, we are stronger, more influential, and even more imitated than anyone could possibly have imagined 11 years ago when this all started with Larry Correia’s original campaign to avoid Puppy-related Sadness.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Baen Brigade Keeps Biting Ankles

Brad Torgersen and the Baen Anklebiter’s Brigade are STILL going on about Jon Del Arroz for no reason that anyone outside of their little Real Conservatives Club can discern.

This is a desperate and unconvincing attempt to reverse-DARVO. Remember, this was posted after Torgersen went out of his way to point out that JDA is divorced and even posted a link to the public record of the divorce filing.. Now, Torgersen was never a rocket scientist, but yes, if you’re publicly attacking someone over the state of their marriage, they are indeed the party who is being wronged.

It should be noted that JDA’s wife filed for divorce in November 2022.
– Brad Torgersen, Oct 1, 2023

Duly noted, Torgersen. Duly noted. Just remember, you’re the one who established that marriages are fair game.

Now, regular readers already know what writers active in the community have to say about JDA. Supporting that is this email I received yesterday:

I thought I’d add my two cents regarding the character of Jon Del Arroz — when I reached out to him on Gab as a complete nobody writer in 2017, he gave me an excellent blurb for my book in a couple of weeks despite his presumably busy schedule. Afterwards, he took the time to follow up on the release and when he found out that I hadn’t sold any copies yet, he posted in a bunch of private groups to try and drum up some sales for me. Great guy and I’ll never forget his help.

It’s going to be hilarious when Baen finally shuts down and all these wannabes and never-weres finally stop pretending that they’re the only real professional writers because someone once offered them a book contract for $5,000. What’s so amusing about their bizarre pretensions is that real writers with the talent to get signed by the major houses and the literary houses – which is to say, writers like me – have always scorned the talentless genre writers signed to specialty imprints like Baen.

Note: I said writers like me. Not me personally. I’ve never scorned independent or genre writers and after repeatedly getting paid to not write books from the major houses, the only reason I talk to Random House and Simon & Schuster these days is to acquire rights from them.

But perhaps the funniest thing about this Baen Books professional in the business is that he has all of 3,087 Twitter followers.

UPDATE: Another creator with direct experience working with JDA provides her testimony.

Authors Larry Correia and Brad Torgosen have been attacking their fellow author Jon Del Arroz, I think because he uses internet controversy as a marketing strategy. Apparently that’s a no-no? And they’ve attempted to use personal family troubles of Del Arroz as a weapon in their campaign, which is despicable. So I thought I should add my voice to the character witnesses for Del Arroz.

DISCUSS ON SG